RM Sotheby’s held an auction last week dedicated to a rare and venerable Bentley Blue Train – or rather, its replica dating back to 2018. The auction closed without any final price announcements, but we know that the previous owner bought the exotic for €500,000.
The original Blue Train was itself inspired by the Bentley Speed Six from the mid-1930s. It was penned and built by Gurney Nutting to be driven by none other than Woolf Barnato, champion racer and head of Bentley Motor Company at the time.
The modern replica was painstakingly hand-crafted by Racing Green Engineering against the order of a U.S. car collector. The auto shop used period-correct blueprints and methods in its work, but it did start with a more up-to-date Bentley Mark IV chassis to simplify things a little. Like the original car, the replica received a 5.7-liter, quad-carb I8 for propulsion.
Having spent some time in the United States, the replica then crossed the Atlantic into Germany. It went on sale with not even 3,000 kilometers (1,860 miles) to show for being eight years old and street-legal.